All Posts in Category: Middle East & North Africa: MENA

The 9th September Geneva agreement between the US and Russia on establishing a ceasefire in Syria, naturally raised expectations for fresh negotiations with the aim of launching political transition in the troubled West Asian country. Instead, in the couple of months since the promising Geneva accord on Syria we have…

Having outlined the sad historical background of the denial of implementation of the core UN principles of equal rights and of self-determination for the people of Cyprus in our Victory Day anniversary analysis (9 May 2016), it is necessary to take a look at the current state of affairs with…

That’s over now, we are going to finish this off thundered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a televised speech to the state-run Red Crescent humanitarian organization, Monday 4 April 2016. State television channel TRT aired live the speech. The neo-Sultan was referring to the generation old autonomy-seeking Kurdish insurgency…

The first five days of November 2013 saw the Nobel Laureate (1995) Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. As a guest participant in this 60th biennial world class conference on global security concerns, I was assigned to the Working Group ‘Turkey and its Neighbours’. Central…

The refugee crisis in Europe escalates by the day to an unprecedented scale shaking the very foundations of the European Union. Just a week away from the crucial summit in Brussels, scheduled for the 7th of March 2016, the European Union is in disarray, lost in a fearful tunnel without…

The White House has repeatedly stated that Russia undermined U.S. efforts to achieve a political settlement in Syria, supporting the Government of President Bashar al-Assad. The American administration further claims that Moscow continues to hinder opportunities to engage the moderate Syrian opposition in the discussion of political change, in which,…

No sooner the first NAVTEX signaling a concerted plan of provocations in the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone expired, Ankara issued a second Navigation Telex notifying the apathetic world that it is here to stay – audaciously seeking to block waters even closer to the southern coast of the Republic of…

Exactly three years ago, in October 2011, my phone rang at my antique maps gallery-cum-office. At the other end of the line was Dr Gregory Reichberg, an American seasoned researcher, a dear colleague then Director of the PRIO Cyprus Centre. Already at my time at the UN University HQ Tokyo…

At the end of the month of March 2014, President Obama made a quick trip to Saudi Arabia after having met America’s allies in Europe in discussing the Ukrainian Crisis and the annexation of Crimea by Moscow. The hyperbolic rhetoric on European and American sides in comparing and linking Putin’s…

Regrettably, the West stubbornly maintains a unilateral position on the Syrian conflict. Hence the chances of its resolution become minimal. As the conflict enters its third year, the regime of Bashar al-Assad seems to be enjoying the support of the majority of the Syrian people and is not going to…